Book review - reportage

The subtitle of Lawrence Wright’s splendid God Save Texas (‘A Journey into the Future of America’) would be alarming if I found it entirely convincing. It’s hard to imagine a future where the Catholic Texan spirit of individualism would seriously overwhelm Yankee Puritanism, however mutated. In New England it’s about hard-earned old money shrewdly invested. In Texas it’s about striking it rich on a hunch, and new money rashly spent. There are contradictions in Texas which allow you to select almost any argument you like from her. She is beautiful and she is barren; corrupt and honourable. Whatever you want to say about her, she will supply abundant evidence.

There are two sorts of people: those who can’t wait to grow up, and those who wish they never had to. It’s fair to say that women figure predominantly in the first group and men in the second, hence the preponderance of male fans of science fiction and fantasy — and dewy-eyed reminiscence about children’s television. I’ve been in many female friendship groups and can’t remember a single occasion on which we’ve sat around thinking about past puppets. On the contrary, the childish things we typically recall are our awful choices of make-up and clothes, and our adoration of the pretty-boy pin-ups in our teenage bedrooms: that is, the things we used to hasten the arrival of longed-for adult life.